Groupon Enters Bear Market On "Lack Of Growth" Scare

While deciphering the adjustments, compulsory one-off charges, promises, ranges, and hopes, dreams, and unicorn tears is hard, the market saw headline beats in EPS and Revenues and surged GRPN above $12 enabling CNBC to proclaim it a winner before moving on... then someone (or maybe a machine) read the statement... "Groupon expects Adjusted EBITDA for the full year to be slightly above 2013 levels." That's just not gonna cut it when you can spend $19 billion on the hope of exponential growth... and sure enough, GRPN shares collapsed - down over 23% from the after-hours highs.

Seems like it's time to buy SnapChat for $30 billion!!

You see - "slightly above 2013" is just not good enough - investors crave quadrupling or quintupling of EBITDA guesses...

GROUPOFF , lets face it .. their advertising base is/are companies in distress ... they are selling % or $ off coupons that you should use immediately to avoid having them become worthless script. These companies are cutting back on their advertising budgets and the buyers for the discounted goods are cutting back also...

Interesting fact about What'sApp deal - I thought I heard that Morgan Stanley, who led the FB IPO and sold some of Zuck's and other insiders Facebook shares to the public for $38 and made Zuck a billionaire more than 20 times over was the "financial advisor" to What'sApp.

I wonder what Morgan Stanley's fee was? i wonder if the terms were a huge percentage of the deal size above a certain threshold? I wonder if Morgan Stanley knew what Zuck's price was before being retained by What'sApp?

I wonder if Morgan Stanley received the $4B cash component of the deal and the What'sApp shareholder received the FB stock, which is probably subject to escrow / clawback / performance?

"Starting tomorrow, Groupon ( www.groupon.com ) (NASDAQ: GRPN) will be kicking off Presidents Day weekend by giving customers 10 dollars off 40 dollars when they purchase a deal for any local business. The $10 bill, as everyone knows, features President Alexander Hamilton -- undeniably one of our greatest presidents and most widely recognized for establishing the country’s financial system.

Beginning Saturday, Feb. 15 at 9 am CST, shoppers will be able to redeem this offer by using the promo code “10OFF40LOCAL”, which isn’t very catchy, but neither was President Hamilton’s famous saying, “nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.” "

So can a company that publishes such a fucked up statement such as above survive for more than a short time with a business model that is nothing more than electronic green stamps? I think no.